Position in chronology
MDP 17, 463
About this tablet
A small Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, dating to the late fourth millennium BCE — among the world's earliest written records. The surviving entries list commodities or animals under various sign-categories, each followed by a numeral, in the standard format of Proto-Elamite accounting. Proto-Elamite script remains largely undeciphered, so only the numerical values can be rendered with confidence; the commodity signs record what was being counted but their exact referents are unknown to modern scholarship. This fragment is a reminder that ancient Susa had its own independent writing system, developed roughly in parallel with early Sumerian cuneiform, and used to manage the complex economy of a major urban center.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a damaged accounting record. Several categories of goods or animals — their exact nature unknown — are listed with quantities: two units of one type, two of another, then single units of several further categories, and finally a larger entry of fifteen units. The beginning and end of most lines are broken away, and the signs naming the commodities cannot yet be read with certainty. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M203~e M346~b , 2 M377 M298 M001[?] [...] , [...] [...] M377[?] M099 M390 M218 M346~b , 2 M348 [...] , [...] [...] , 1 M206~d M346~b , 1 [...] , 1 M254~a M295~b[?] [...] , [...] M346~b , 15 x , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M203~e M346~b , 2(N01) M377 M298 M001#? [...] , [...] [...] M377#? M099 M390 M218 M346~b , 2(N01) M348 [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) M206~d M346~b , 1(N01)# [...] , 1(N01) M254~a M295~b#? [...] , [...] M346~b# , 1(N14) 5(N01) x , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 463. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008661) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.